TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY Volume 359, Number 10, October 2007, Pages 4865–4943 S 0002-9947(07)04182-7 Article electronically published on May 16, 2007
AKOSZULDUALITYFORPROPS
BRUNO VALLETTE
Abstract. The notion of prop models the operations with multiple inputs and multiple outputs, acting on some algebraic structures like the bialgebras or the Lie bialgebras. In this paper, we generalize the Koszul duality theory of associative algebras and operads to props.
Introduction The Koszul duality is a theory developed for the first time in 1970 by S. Priddy for associative algebras [Pr]. To every quadratic algebra A, it associates a dual coalgebra A¡ and a chain complex called a Koszul complex. When this complex is acyclic, we say that A is a Koszul algebra. In this case, the algebra A and its representations have many properties (cf. A. Beilinson, V. Ginzburg and W. Soergel [BGS]). In 1994, this theory was generalized to algebraic operads by V. Ginzburg and M.M. Kapranov (cf. [GK]). An operad is an algebraic object that models the operations with n inputs (and one output) A⊗n → A acting on a type of algebras. For instance, there exist operads As, Com and Lie coding associative, commutative and Lie algebras. The Koszul duality theory for operads has many applications: construction of a “small” chain complex to compute the homology groups of an algebra, minimal model of an operad, and notion of algebra up to homotopy. The discovery of quantum groups (cf. V. Drinfeld [Dr1, Dr2]) has popularized algebraic structures with products and coproducts, that’s to say, operations with multiple inputs and multiple outputs A⊗n → A⊗m . It is the case of bialgebras, Hopf algebras and Lie bialgebras, for instance. The framework of operads is too narrow to treat such structures. To model the operations with multiple inputs and outputs, one has to use a more general algebraic object: the props. Following J.-P. Serre in [S], we call an “algebra” over a prop P,aP-algebra. It is natural to try to generalize Koszul duality theory to props. A few works have been done in that direction by M. Markl and A.A. Voronov in [MV] and W.L. Gan in [G]. Actually, M. Markl and A.A. Voronov proved Koszul duality theory 1 for what M. Kontsevich calls 2 -PROPs, and W.L. Gan proved it for dioperads. One has to bear in mind that an associative algebra is an operad, an operad is a 1 1 2 -PROP, a 2 -PROP is a dioperad and a dioperad induces a prop: 1 Associative algebras → Operads → − PROPs → Dioperads ; Props. 2
Received by the editors June 27, 2005. 2000 Mathematics Subject Classification. Primary 18D50; Secondary 16W30, 17B26, 55P48. Key words and phrases. Prop, Koszul duality, operad, Lie bialgebra, Frobenius algebra.